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Full BackUp That Review

Long before there was cloud storage there was email and as long as there has been email people have been emailing their files to themselves. BackUp That takes emailing files to yourself to a whole new level. It uses the storage with your email accounts as the cloud storage for your files.

Starting Out
To get started using BackUp That you just need to visit their website and create a free account. The service is currently free to use and since you use the storage available in your email accounts that you allow BackUp That access to storage can be free as well. Your cloud storage is limited to how much free space you have in your email storage. The can use a number of different email services including popular services like GMail and Yahoo. You can even use your own email provider from your own hosting account if you choose.

Uploading Files
Once you have connected an email account to your BackUp That account you can select files and folders to your email storage. The service creates a separate folder in your email service to store all of the files. One of the limits of the service is they do not allow media files, including music and video files, so no way to upload your music collection.

Downloading Files
Downloading files as clicking the download button on the website. Since the files are stored as attachments in your email accounts you can also access and download files directly from your email account. This makes it easy to access if you are away from your computer and only have access to your email account.

Attachment Management
One of the additional features is the ability to manage your email attachments from the website. In theory this would be a great feature to be able to download and save attachments from one location. I tried times to try and manage attachments but I could not actually get this to work. This was unfortunate, it would have been one of the best parts of the service.

Overall
This is an interesting service that takes emailing files to yourself to a whole new level. There has been other software that allowed you to use your GMail account as a cloud drive, but this does offer several more options for storage. The fact that the service needs the Java browser plugin is a problem. The number of problems with the Java plugin that seem to grow everyday and is often considered a security risk. There are several services out there that offer free storage and BackUp That could be helpful if you are running out of space or simply need to store some photos temporally before transferring them to a more secure service. Also the fact that the service uses email for storage leaves your files unencrypted and readable by anyone that could gain access to your email account.

It is a novel idea to us email accounts, and use multiple accounts, as cloud storage but not sure if it is ready for everyday use to safely store your files. It will be interesting to watch how the service develops.